


warning: vehicle contains emotionally unstable cargo

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Humanstuck, Multi, hellll yeah baby, includes some pesterlogs, rarepairs.....cries, shoulda submitted this one for polyswap, will be multi-part! i might just update slow lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 07:02:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15836190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: let's play hopscotch in malls, let's drive fast with the top down, let's turn up the music as loud as it'll go, let's put a couch on an island in the middle of the freeway and wave at everyone on their way to work, let's hug strangers in parking lots, let's hand out secret messages at traffic lights, let's make lists of all the things that make us smile and tick them off one at a time, the world will carry on without you and me when we're gone, let it carry on without us today





	warning: vehicle contains emotionally unstable cargo

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from tumblr user atiredonnie, thanks for that!

it’s 4:30 am and all five of them are varying degrees of lucid, speeding down the velvet-dark dirt road as fast as dave’s outdated piece of junk car will carry them. it’s a 1995 honda accord painted a bright garish red, courtesy of aradia and karkat and dave’s spare set of keys. it’s a color jade likes, terezi loves, and dave says looks like a candy-red hate crime.

they’ve been driving for almost the whole day, going to precisely who-the-fuck-knows, new york in dave’s ugly car. he’d planned it with aradia, the demons, and they’d swooped in yesterday after their finals like birds of prey to snatch up karkat and terezi and jade from the lovely clutches of sleep, dumping them unceremoniously into the backseat and speeding off. they’ve all migrated positions over the course of the 10 hours that they’ve been on the road--karkat’s in the uncomfortable bucket seat, more passed out than asleep, and terezi was suckered into driving. dave and aradia are both asleep, slumped together in the back with an awake jade prone over their legs. nobody speaks.

the radio’s playing softly, some depeche mode tune dave likes bubbling from the car’s radio, the permanently-extended tape deck and busted volume knob leering at her from above the console, karkat’s extended foot with it’s scuffed adidas sneaker resting on top of it. something smells of rubbing alcohol. terezi peers through the rear view mirror into the backseat to see jade looking directly at her, and starts so hard she almost crashes the car. jade smiles, slow and sleepy, rolling over to squish her face into aradia’s soft stomach and curl her arms around dave’s waist. terezi rolls her eyes.

 

it’s the next day of their road trip, and dave’s popped open the trunk of the car to reveal two (2) suitcases belonging to himself and aradia, due to them being the only two who knew that a road trip was taking place. he rummages in his, then aradia’s, then his again before extracting a small, devilish object with a chrome finish and twelve-foot insulated cord; the karaoke machine.

he smiles, wider than karkat and jade have ever seen him smile (terezi and aradia’ve seen it wider), as he plugs it into his portable generator and turns it on. karkat groans as though he’s getting his teeth pulled, his aggravated dissent softening and melting into the raspy giggles that jade loves as terezi and aradia press themselves against either side of him, aradia’s hair dripping over his shoulders like a curtain of molten chocolate and terezi so close it looks like her freckles are trying to migrate onto karkat’s skin. jade drapes her arms over dave’s arched back as he fiddles with the karaoke machine, and they both stand up with matching wicked grins on their faces as the first few riffs of a very familiar song flow from the speakers and oh hell, they’re really going to sing karaoke to funkytown in the middle of the woods, aren’t they. god damn it.

aradia accepts her fate first, seizing the mic from dave’s outstretched hands and absolutely wailing into it, her normally harmonic, melodious voice twisted and pulled like freshwater taffy into an eardrum-bursting screech--and suddenly it’s terezi howling like a wounded dog into the shitty microphone, her voice tinny and rattling around the blown-out speakers. jade’s glass-shattering soprano shrieks a verse, and then dave’s earth-shaking baritone. karkat stands impassive, a statue carved of teenage vocal repression, until jade’s needling and terezi’s gravelly cackling wears him down to the point where he finally snaps, stomping over to aradia and snatching the microphone, taking a deep deep deep breath and absolutely _roaring_ a “oh won’t you take _me_ to, funky _TOWNNN??????_ ” and jade collapses over terezi in feverish giggles and dave’s holding aradia up by her underarms as she convulses with laughter and even the man himself is shaking with the effort of holding in his funny little dave snorts and karkat, victorious, drops the microphone carelessly into the dewy grass with a smile that looks almost alien on his face.

 

its midnight and dave yawns wide in the driver’s seat, pushing a hand under his sunglasses to rub at his tired eyes as he guides the car under two, four, six warm day-yellow street lights, the shadows of looming trees in sharp relief over all of their faces. they’ve been driving in almost-silence for a full six hours; the radio service had cut out about eight ago and they’d all stopped talking past the 4-hour mark.  
they float in the limbo between awakeness and sleep, or at least aradia does, lying prone in the wayback with her tangled and knotted mess of hair-tentacles spread out in a scratchy blanket over the knees of terezi and karkat. terezi herself is nearly nodding off, her head against the jostling window and nearsighted eyes tracing nonexistent shapes in the inky darkness outside it. karkat’s not-quite-snoring in between them, his hair wilder than he ever lets it get completely lucid and his sweater sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the little cloud of ‘better than this’ that seems to follow him everywhere having dissipated for the night. jade’s the most awake out of all of them, and she’s not even driving--she sits up straight on the passenger side, her bright eyes like peridot chips alert behind her bubble glasses, one of her tan bare feet up on the dashboard and the other out the window, hooked around the side mirror like she couldn’t care less. 

a bubbly mostly-asleep terezi-giggle from the backseat breaks the heavy quiet, a sound like the tolling of mouse-sized church bells, and the girl herself is reaching over, over with her smooth pale hands to trace them over karkat’s face. he cracks one bleary eye open, as almost-asleep as she is, and aradia looks up, braces herself for the shitstorm but her own fog of sleep evaporates immediately as instead of pitching a vintage shitfit (as karkat is wont to do) he closes his eye again and leeeeeeeans over, his face millimeters from terezi’s, the combined volume of their frizzing hair creating a translucent curtain as she closes the distance and presses her soft lips still stained with grape faygo to his chapped, boyish ones. 

terezi locks her fingers in a lace crown around his neck and hefts herself over, displacing aradia, their lips still pressed semi-awkwardly together, and karkat sighs like he’s in a movie as he wraps his own arms around her waist and settles her on his lap. aradia holds her breath to keep from laughing, her gaze flicking between the two in the backseat and dave and jade, oblivious, up in front. terezi and karkat separate, both of their heads drooping onto each other’s shoulders as they sap the last of each other’s energy and drop off to sleep. 

 

terezi’s never fully gotten the hang of braids--her own hair’s never been quite long enough for any special style besides her trademark straight-flip-fuzz and latula would rather buzz all her own hair off before she let terezi touch it. so, she’s resigned to fumbling her slender pale fingers with freckles on the knuckles through aradia’s thick curls as her method of practice. she decides that the tangles in aradia’s hair must be both sentient and actively reproducing, and tells her as such. karkat laughs, and terezi informs him that aradia’s hair constitutes braiding expert mode and if he deigns to insult her cosmetological prowess again she would kick his dick so far into outer space that he’d need to pry it off of a goddamn satellite. he shuts up after that.

they’re sitting in a single-file line on the left bench of a picnic table and jade’s out like a fucking light, sprawled over karkat’s lap, a heated blanket of lightly snoring girl. dave’s fingers dart through her dark hair the same way terezi’s do to aradia’s, his shoulder vacuum-sealed to karkat’s and his legs curled under him in a way that looks uncomfortable but probably actually isn’t. karkat’s not facing dave, but he’s half-leaning on him anyways as jade compresses his thighs and aradia’s wandering fingers trace the inside of his elbow and it’s instinctual, of course it is, why wouldn’t it be a reflex reaction after seventeen years of knowing the same four people to take a huge swig from his bottle of icy water and just sort of lean over and--

aradia shrieks like a banshee as karkat’s cold tongue makes contact with her bare shoulder and she shoots up away from him, pulling her hair (only half in braids) from terezi’s hands and sending it smacking into her face. terezi swears and jade jerks awake, rubbing her candy green apple eyes under where her glasses had pressed angry red lines into her hairline and bridge of her nose. aradia twists her face into what she probably thinks is a grimace but instead just looks like a diluted version of her famous 35-megawatt grin and _lunges_ , the weight of descending teenage girl pinning karkat to the ground as she pokes and prods him relentlessly in retaliation. karkat squirms under her grip and dave laughs hard enough to lose his breath.

\--gallowsCalibrator [GC] opened memo: R41NBOW RUMPUS RO4D TR1P--

GG: uuuuugh terezi were all in the same car!!! why do we need to text each other  
GC: B3C4US3 1T 1S L4T3 4ND W3 DONT W4NT TO W4K3 UP 4R4D14 OR 3LS3 SH3 W1LL Y3LL 4T US  
AA: well its t00 late n0w! daves ph0ne is buzzing like crazy right next t0 my ear  
GC: SORRY >:[  
AA: its 0k i d0nt really mind  
GG: terezi if you wake up karkat i swear to god ill delete you from the entire internet  
GC: TH3 3NT1R3 1NT3RN3T >:?  
GG: yes!!! even your webkinz  
GG: theyre GONE teez  
GC: 1M SH4K1NG 1N MY BOOTS >:P


End file.
